YVONNE’S TAKE: Development by Executive goodies

When Kenyans promulgated the Constitution of Kenya in 2010, the one thing they wanted was to unshackle themselves. Unshackle themselves from a strong controlling centre, one we even called the Central Government. Kenyans wanted a different way to govern, one that gave them autonomy and say over the future, their destiny, and to determine for themselves what is important to them and the ones they love. The era of singing ‘Tawala Kenya, Tawala’ was to be a thing of the past.

However, it would seem that the successive administrations that were charged with implementing the Constitution are still stuck in the past. From the Uhuru Kenyatta administration to the present, we are witnessing what appears to be a hangover or an attempt to cling nostalgically to days past—a past that Kenyans voted to move away from. The Office of the Presidency is struggling between facing the past and facing the future.

I am talking about the tours we are witnessing, termed ‘Working Tours’ or ‘Development Tours,’ that involve what looks like the entire Presidency, with the Executive in tow, seemingly bestowing development or dishing out goodies around the country. They are prefaced with the old pictures of yore of leaders from that region making pilgrimages to the Central Government to discuss the development of their regions—pictures that are very reminiscent of the days of ‘Mtukufu’ someone. All of this as if devolution does not exist, as if we did not say that funds follow function.

So, I find these tours rather curious, termed ‘Working Tours’ or ‘Meet-the-People Tours’, when the people are only ever really addressed from the top of sunroofed vehicles. Not only that, now even the security officials are roped into what is increasingly looking like a show of the might of government. Folks, this is not in tandem with the dispensation we live in today. The Presidency must lead in abiding by the spirit and the letter of the Constitution.

The conduct of the President is contrary to the Constitution of Kenya. Distribution of power and resources is not done from the sunroof of cars in the convoy of the Presidency. The Presidency is still stuck in the past, proceeding on a nostalgic drive, picking what used to belong to the past and trying to distribute it to the future.

I mean, I can still understand how launching projects is a big deal. The idea of a plaque in one’s honour may still have some symbolism—perhaps to one individual rather than the population. But it is no longer in tandem with the Constitution and certainly not with the country’s purse strings to have the entire Executive out on the road week after week, doling out Executive goodies.